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Good evening, testing.

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So good evening.

We'll get started.

Thank you so much for coming out during this summer, July evening.

I know that your time is valuable, and so we'll get started on time.

Uh Washoe County remains committed to transparency and making it easier for our residents to understand how public dollars are collected, allocated, and spent.

While this information has always been publicly available through our budget documents and financial reports, the Washoe County checkbook makes it much easier to explore county revenues and expenditures in near real time.

We update every night.

Budget 101 has become an important part of our commitment to public engagement.

This session is designed to walk residents through how the county is budget is developed, explain the decisions that shape it, and provide opportunities to ask questions and learn more about the process.

For those who couldn't attend tonight, this presentation is being recorded and it will be available on our YouTube channel.

We encourage everyone to watch it, share it with others, and reach out with your questions.

The Washoe Checkbook continues to build on Nevada's commitment to open government and financial transparency developed in coordination with statewide transparency efforts.

This tool gives residents direct access to the county financial information and supports informed civic engagement.

So that's from our chairwoman.

And again, she regrets that she could not be here this evening.

But this is an event that she really spearheaded last year.

This is our second uh annual budget 101.

We're very excited to be here.

A little bit of housekeeping, and then we'll get right into it.

My name is Abby Yakobin.

I'm your chief financial officer.

I have been in this line of work since 2003, but here at the county since uh 2022, so about three and a half years.

This presentation will be just over an hour.

We've budgeted an hour and a half, but we usually spend about an hour, and then I have some frequently asked questions that I'll ask our teammates to answer that we couldn't naturally weave into the presentation, but are really interesting.

Um let me introduce my my teammates.

This is Comptroller Kathy Hill.

I'm gonna try it, and this is budget director Lori Cook.

Kathy Hill has uh more than 15 years of experience in municipal uh government finance and many, many more than that in in finance and accounting.

She has a bachelor's of science in um in accountancy from UNR, and she is instrumental in preparing and disseminating and making sure that the financial statements are done accurately, correctly, transparently, and on time in the nationwide best practice format, which is called the annual comprehensive financial report.

You can see that on our website, and she's instrumental in that.

In addition, she was instrumental in creating and publishing the checkbook, which has been online for more than a year now, but it's very exciting because it updates almost in real time and it gives you more access quicker to our financial information.

So thank you, Comptroller Hill for that.

And uh budget director Lori Cook.

Lori has more than 20 years experience in municipal finance and an MBA.

Lori is instrumental uh in her with her team at creating the the county's budget book, and we present that budget book in again the government finance officers association best format, best nationwide best format.

Um, and so we have won that award about 25 years in a row, 23, 24.

We might be approaching 25 now.

I know you know this.

Um, and so that is something that isn't an amazing feat.

It takes uh it takes several months, and it is uh it's also on our website, and I know you'll be speaking about that.

In addition, she's nationally recognized for uh revolutionizing the process of doing the budget internally so that we have more collaboration, more listening, and we can do more innovative things uh with the same number of dollars.

So that is something that we're very, very proud of.

These are brilliant colleagues of mine, and I'm thrilled to turn this presentation over.

Lori will kick us off with the the forecasting and the and the puzzle piece, and Kathy will will um will take the the floor second because she's going to be talking about actuals and where to find those in the checkbook and how financial reporting works.

Um here I'm going to turn it over to my esteemed colleagues.

And then I'll ask you some, as we've done before, I'll ask you some frequently asked questions that didn't weave themselves into the presentation, and then ask you what questions you receive so that you can tell us.

And uh a moment of housekeeping that I didn't think of.

If you have questions, there are there are little cards of paper in the back.

If you want to raise your hand if you have a question, I'll run one to you, and then we'll incorporate that into the QA at the end.

Thank you, Nancy.

Thank you.

Pretty good.

So again, uh, my name is Lori Cook.

I am the uh division director of budget for the county.

Um, have been in the budget division since 2013, the uh budget director since 2018, but I started uh with the county in 1999.

So uh been around for a little bit and seen a lot of changes, and um that's one thing is that we are fairly fairly small county, so we do get a lot of interaction with other departments.